{"id":50877,"date":"2023-11-03T06:01:09","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T06:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/8bcd58a5-5017-4bdd-81da-17d05fe4bec5"},"modified":"2023-11-03T06:32:32","modified_gmt":"2023-11-03T06:32:32","slug":"nasa-lucy-missions-first-asteroid-flyby-reveals-not-one-asteroid-but-two","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/rss_feed\/nasa-lucy-missions-first-asteroid-flyby-reveals-not-one-asteroid-but-two\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Lucy mission’s first asteroid flyby reveals not one asteroid, but two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Main belt asteroid Dinkinesh has its own moon, NASA Lucy mission scientists have learned. <\/p>

By Iain Todd\n <\/p>

Published: Friday, 03 November 2023 at 06:01 AM<\/p>

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NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has flown by its first asteroid and found not one asteroid, but two.<\/p>

The first images captured by the spacecraft show that small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh is actually a binary pair.<\/p>

This means the asteroid<\/a> is actually two asteroids, a smaller body in orbit around the larger body.<\/p>

The Lucy spacecraft’s Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager captured images of asteroid Dinkinesh during a flyby this week.<\/p>

Image of asteroid Dinkinesh captured by NASA’s Lucy mission on 1 November 2023. The image revealed that Dinkinesh is not one asteroid, but two. Credit: NASA\/Goddard\/SwRI\/Johns Hopkins APL\/NOAO<\/figcaption><\/figure>

The images of Dinkinesh were taken at 16:55 UTC on 1 November 2023, within a minute of Lucy’s closest approach to the asteroid at a distance of about 430km.<\/p>

In the weeks leading up to the Dinkinesh flyby, Lucy scientists had observed changes in the asteroid’s brightness, leading them to suspect this might be caused by a second asteroid in orbit around the larger body.<\/p>

The Lucy images confirm that Dinkinesh is indeed a close binary. The asteroid has a moon.<\/p>

Initial data suggests the larger body is about 790m at its widest point, while the smaller is about 220m.<\/p>

NASA’s Lucy mission explained<\/strong><\/h2>
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An artist’s impression showing the Lucy spacecraft flying by a Trojan Asteroid near Jupiter. Credit: Southwest Research Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>

NASA’s Lucy mission<\/a> launched on 16 October 2021 on a 12-year journey to study Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids<\/a>.<\/p>

The Trojan asteroids are large space rocks, remnants of the formation of the Solar System, that share Jupiter’s orbit, and are positioned ahead of or behind the planet.<\/p>

The Lucy mission is due to arrive at the Trojan asteroids in August 2027, when it will make flybys of the bodies.<\/p>

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An artist’s impression of the Trojan asteroids, which share the same orbital path around the Sun as gas giant Jupiter. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Lucy’s Dinkinesh encounter<\/strong><\/h2>

The Lucy spacecraft flew by asteroid Dinkinesh as part of an in-flight test of its scientific capabilities.<\/p>

The mission team used the encounter to test the system that enables Lucy to track an asteroid autonomously as it whizzes by at 10,000 mph.<\/p>

“This is an awesome series of images. They indicate that the terminal tracking system worked as intended, even when the universe presented us with a more difficult target than we expected,” says Tom Kennedy, guidance and navigation engineer at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado.<\/p>

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A series of images of binary asteroid Dinkinesh captured by NASA\u2019s Lucy spacecraft during its closest approach on 1 November 2023. Credit: NASA\/Goddard\/SwRI\/ASU<\/figcaption><\/figure>

“It\u2019s one thing to simulate, test, and practice. It\u2019s another thing entirely to see it actually happen.”<\/p>

Yet while this was primarily a test of engineering, unsurprisingly the close encounter of the asteroid has yielded many scientific insights.<\/p>

“We knew this was going to be the smallest main belt asteroid ever seen up close,” says Keith Noll, Lucy project scientist from NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.<\/p>

“The fact that it is two makes it even more exciting. In some ways these asteroids look similar to the near-Earth asteroid binary Didymos and Dimorphos that DART saw<\/a>, but there are some really interesting differences that we will be investigating.”<\/p>

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A diagram showing the flight path of the Lucy spacecraft as it travels out to the Trojan asteroids. Credit: Southwest Research Institute<\/figcaption><\/figure>

What next for Lucy?<\/strong><\/h2>

It will take up to a week for the team to downlink the remainder of the Lucy Dinkinesh asteroid encounter data from the spacecraft.<\/p>

The team will use this to evaluate the spacecraft\u2019s behaviour during the encounter and to prepare for the next flyby, which will be main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson in 2025.<\/p>

Lucy will then prepare for its encounter of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, starting in 2027.<\/p>

Video – why study asteroids?<\/strong><\/h2>